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AT&T Can Handle Your Business

AT&T recently released a tool to help corporations and large companies manage huge amounts of internet information, especially video. I spoke with Roman Pacewicz, the senior vice president of strategy and application services at AT&T Business Solutions, about why this was necessary and what it means for businesses. Here?? what I learned??

The tool is a new content delivery network (CDN) that caches and streams company videos and or massive files without pixelation, stalling, buffering, etc... Think of it as a network brain.

It's a combination of hardware and software that the company installs on your network, and will work behind company firewalls.

It costs a few hundred dollars a month, depending on several size and control factors.

The technology was born from CDN's used on public internet networks, which became more needed when Internet video exploded.

AT&T manages the network from its own control centers and can make adjustments as needed.

Some possible business applications include:

- training material, which nowadays is interactive and video-based

- internal communications, like CEO speeches for employees

- handling large health care files, like MRI's for doctors to view over the network

- daily briefings at financial firms that update employees on what stocks/products they're recommending that day

This was bound to happen. With so much video and other massive files eating up company bandwidth, solutions are needed. Due to AT&T's experience with public CDN's, it's a safe bet they got the technology and management down cold.

Readers: Are there better ways to manage content than a CDN? In your opinion, is it worth the cost? Have you had any trouble streaming your company's content?